Erin Patinkin, left, and Agatha Kulaga, owners of Ovenly in Brooklyn, share a passion for baking as well as Eastern European roots. Mario Batali is counted among those who love their Brooklyn blackout cake.

Erin Patinkin, left, and Agatha Kulaga, owners of Ovenly in Brooklyn, share a passion for baking as well as Eastern European roots. Mario Batali is counted among those who love their Brooklyn blackout cake.

Photo: Winona Barton-Ballentine Photo

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Photo: Journal Register Co.

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Photo: Journal Register Co.

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Photo: Journal Register Co.

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Photo: Journal Register Co.

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In Brooklyn, line stretches out the door for Ovenly’s blackout cake, cookies

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During a recent trip to Manhattan, I ventured out to explore the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, one of the five boroughs of New York City. With its large Polish and Polish-American population, it is sometimes called Little Poland.

Pop singer Pat Benatar, Mickey Rooney, Mae West and members of the band Kiss were raised or born in this former hub of manufacturing and shipping. While walking, I was wondering why all of the movie production tractor trailers were in this very industrial-looking neighborhood. After doing a bit of research, I discovered it is an area of interest for film producers. According to Greenpointers.com, it is where “scenes from the movie ‘The Departed,’ including the scene where Jack Nicholson’s character first meets Matt Damon’s character were shot. The diner and grocery store scenes were both shot in the Park Luncheonette. The television series “Rescue Me” and “The Black Donnellys” were also routinely filmed there, as are “Third Watch” and “Lipstick Jungle,” among others.

In addition to the food stores and restaurants serving the Polish community, new eateries feed the young professionals and artists moving there, who want to live close to Manhattan.

Finding the bakery located at 31 Greenpoint Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y., www.oven.ly, 888-899-2213, was a bit of a challenge with all of the surrounding construction and, it was not in an area you would think a bakery would have people in line out the door for their award-winning salted chocolate chip cookies, bloody mary scones and Brooklyn blackout cake heralded by ABC’s “The Chew,” when Mario Batali said it was his favorite chocolate cake. The recipes from the book below, will be a welcome addition to your holiday creations.

Agatha Kulaga recently talked about how she and her business partner, Erin Patinkin got started. Both with advanced degrees and working in social service professions, baking seemed to be their passion. Meeting at a food- focused book club, they found out they share Eastern European roots. Erin grew up in Chicago and was always thrilled to be in the kitchen with her grandmother and mother and relished the Polish and Austrian dishes her grandparents taught her to love, like matzo balls and poppy seed rolls. Agatha grew up in New Britain, in a bilingual Polish home. Some of her happiest childhood memories include baking alongside her mother and grandmother, making Old-World sweets such as apple cake, poppy-seeded rolled cake and fat dessert dumplings.

Their dream came true in 2010 when they began making bar snacks in a commercial kitchen for a bar and then were asked to produce breakfast pastries for the daytime coffeehouse at the bar. The bakery opened in 2012 and now employs 47 people who bake for not only their retail bakery, but for their restaurant and wholesale customers as well. They are proud to hire clients from Getting Out and Staying Out and the Ansob Center for Refugees.

Ovenly recently opened up another location at UrbanSpace Vanderbilt, a permanent food hall on the corner of 45th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue, by Grand Central terminal.

The authors wrote, “after making our Thanksgiving pies last year, we found ourselves overwhelmed with tons of extra apples, so we decided to cut them into chunks and freeze them for other recipes, like this one. The Salted Breadcrumb Topping adds a bit of savory to this lightly sweetened batter.”

SALTED APPLE BREAD

Softened unsalted butter and flour, for preparing the loaf pan

½ cup (4 ounces) unsalted butter

¾ cup whole milk

¾ cup sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

¼ cup maple syrup, the darker the better; they use Grade B

¼ cup hazelnut oil or substitute ¼ cup canola oil

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup rolled oats

½ cup whole-wheat pastry flour

1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1½ cups (7 ounces) apples; peeled, cored and cubed into ½-inch pieces

Salted Breadcrumb Topping; recipe included

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9- by 5-inch loaf pan with softened butter and dust the pan with flour.

In a small saucepan over low heat (or in a small, microwave-safe bowl in a microwave oven), melt the butter and set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together the whole milk, sugar, eggs, maple syrup, oil, vanilla extract and melted butter until well blended. In a separate large bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, oats, whole-wheat pastry flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cloves and nutmeg. Using a spatula or a wooden spoon, add the flour-oat mixture to the milk mixture until almost combined.

Fold in the apples until the ingredients are just wet, and the fruit is distributed throughout the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and top with the Salted Breadcrumb Topping. Bake for 50-55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean. Makes 1 loaf.

The authors wrote, “these spiced-up pecans are great around the holidays - the blend of maple syrup, brown sugar and thyme makes us want to curl up next to a fireplace with a big bowl of the stuff. But the truth is that this treat is among our most versatile snacks - right at home at a cocktail party, paired with a glass of wine or a nibble of cheese; equally welcome as dessert, crumbled over your favorite ice cream.”

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 rimmed sheet pans with parchment paper. In a small saucepan or in a small, microwave-safe bowl in a microwave oven, melt the butter and set aside to cool. In a large bowl, mix the cooled butter and all the remaining ingredients, minus 1 teaspoon sea salt until well combined. Be sure to mix thoroughly in order to incorporate the wet ingredients, which may settle at the bottom of the bowl.

Spread the pecan mixture on the prepared rimmed sheet pans using a spatula. The pecans should be in an even layer on the rimmed sheet pans. Bake for 18-20 minutes, stirring the pecans halfway through. The pecans are ready when they are lightly browned. Do not overbake. Remove the pecans from the oven, and sprinkle them lightly with the remaining 1 teaspoon of sea salt. Let them cool completely on the rimmed sheet pans, and then scrape them from the parchment and separate any large clumps. Store pecans in an airtight container for up to 6 months. Makes 8-10 servings

Elm City Brew Festival: 1-5 p.m., VIP hour begins at noon, Nov. 14, College Street Music Hall, 238 College St., New Haven, 877-987-6487, www.collegestreetmusichall.com/brew, VIP $35 advance only, general admission $25 in advance, $30 at door, designated driver $10. Proceeds benefit New Haven Center for Performing Arts, Inc. More than 35 craft breweries will showcase nearly 200 brews, and have brewers and reps on hand. Food from New Haven’s Geronimo Restaurant Group will be available. Live music will be provided by local acts Where the Wild Live and Wise Old Moon.

Hearth-Cooked Dinner: 7 p.m. Nov. 19, Noah Webster House Museum, 227 South Main St., West Hartford, 860-521-5362, $75 tickets available at www.noahwebsterhouse.org. Funds raised will support the Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society’s mission. Evening will feature chef Bill Rizzuto, the founder and proprietor of Rizzuto’s Restaurant & Bar, which has four locations. Using the hearth in the museum’s reproduction 18th-century kitchen, he will create a three-course traditional colonial meal using contemporary ingredients. Enjoy a glass of wine or beer, nosh on a charcuterie platter, and watch Rizzuto at work in the reproduction hearth using a variety of cast iron tools and implements to prepare the meal. Dinner, including complimentary wine and beer including will be served at 7:30 p.m., followed by dessert and entertainment by musician Thomas Hooker Hanford. Following dinner, Noah Webster’s lantern-lit historic house will be open for guests to try a variety of tavern games. What exactly is on the menu will be a mystery until the night of, but he did give a few hints: “Definitely beef and probably a classic New England fish like cod.” And of course, Rizzuto will be using the beehive oven to bake bread.

Send us your requests

What restaurant recipes or other recipes would you like to have? What food products are you having difficulty finding? What cooking questions do you have? Send them to me at the contact info below.

Contact Stephen Fries, professor and coordinator of the Hospitality Management Programs at Gateway Community College, at gw-stephen.fries@gwcc.commnet.edu or Dept. FC, Gateway Community College, 20 Church St., New Haven 06510. Include your full name, address and phone number. Due to volume, I might not be able to publish every request. For more, go to www.stephenfries.com.